Lions, Tigers, and Bears

SHOULD YOU RETAIN A FINANCIAL ADVISOR?

It turns out that the 28-page Vanguard Research paper I summarized yesterdayis available on line, for those interested in the details and underlying assumptions. (Thanks Ron Sheldon.) Does it make sense to pay a financial advisor $20,000 a year (1% of your $2 million, say)? For most people, I’d suggest spending $11.46 or $9.99 instead. But there will always be exceptions. (And before they sign on with an advisor, they might first note the blinking asterisk down to the right of this post — Ask Less — and consider the 10 Reasons he gives for why you shouldn’t retain him, either.)

BEARS

You were impressed by that bear Monday? Who wouldn’t be? But check out this bear — and his friends the lion and the tiger. There’s even a nice moral to their story.

BULLS

Former Congressman Allen West of “The Guardian Fund” is soliciting my support — $5 or more — to help impeach the President . . . so that he “may finally answer for the things he has done to destroy this country.”

I decided not to give because I actually like that the stock market has doubled on the President’s watch, reaching all-time highs. To me, this suggests that capitalists think this country is not being destroyed but, rather, remains a good bet. (And that sooner or later, the Republicans will let us put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.) And I like the fact that the $1.5 trillion deficit President Bush handed President Obama has been cut by two-thirds so that the Debt is no longer growing faster than the economy as a whole. And I like the fact that everyone now has access to affordable health care — or will, once Republican governors stop rejecting the Medicaid expansion money that’s theirs for the taking. And that health care costs have risen slower than at any time in decades and that our energy situation is so much improved and that we have three times as many women on the Supreme Court and no longer discriminate nearly so flagrantly against our LGBT friends, neighbors, coworkers, and relatives. I don’t even mind the fact that we’re not engaged in disastrous wars.

You know whom I’d like to impeach? The Republican leadership that will allow practically nothing to come up for a vote, lest it pass and we move forward.